


well-met by moonlight

by softlyblue



Series: accidental fellowships (pevensies in middle-earth) [1]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: AU - Pevensies in the Fellowship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, Loneliness, Other, Rivendell | Imladris, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29525280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/softlyblue
Summary: "Don't stop your song on my account," Susan says, stepping into the room. It is, like every other room in Rivendell, neither inside nor out, but it is slightly more protected than most; paintings decorate the walls, dark, spots of white light like reedy points of hope, swords, crowns, tears on the cheeks of ethereal elves neither male nor female.The singer is the ranger, the one that had brought Lucy and Edmund back to her. He sits on the opposite side of the room, against another set of stairs, barefoot and barely clothed, a nightshirt untied and halfway open against his chest. His hair had been messy with the dirt of the road and sweat, but now his beard has been trimmed and his hair brushed, washed; all the same he has that air to him that all rangers have. Half-wild. Kept in only by his own will. "I did not know you were still awake, lady." His nightshirt is red and old, worn, and beautiful. Susan can see the stitching in the places it has not quite worn away, around the square neck and the sleeves, silver thread. It shines in the moonlight.
Relationships: Aragorn | Estel & Susan Pevensie
Series: accidental fellowships (pevensies in middle-earth) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2169078
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26





	well-met by moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> lucy is 15, edmund 17, susan 18, and peter 21 in this. canonical pevensie age differences & ages have been thrown out. in this au, they arrived in middle-earth at different points and times, although they left england at the same time: lucy arrived at tom bombadil's house just before the fellowship, edmund landed near weathertop a few days before before aragorn & the hobbits came there, susan met legolas on the west side of the misty mountains on his way to rivendell, and peter landed with boromir some time before he came to rivendell. this is post-prince caspian, pre-dawn treader.
> 
> hope you enjoy!

It is very late at night when Susan slips out between her sheets, cold all over her skin, the open elvish rooms suitable for them, perhaps, but not for her more mortal delicacies. She inspects her skin, the beds of her fingernails, and finds purple and blue there among the ripped skin, the clotting blood as her days of travel wipe themselves from her body. She sighs.

In the bed beside her, Lucy snorts and snores. She's curled up in a ball, the thin coverlet wrapped in her fists close to her chest, a lot smaller in sleep than she appears in waking, when she becomes bolschy and stubborn.

In this chamber there is no door for Susan to sneak open and shut. She drapes her blanket around her shoulders like a shawl, a further layer around the nightwear she has been given by one of the elves - not the lady of the house, but one of her maidens, who seems to favour rich purples and warm blues. Her feet are bare, but she doesn't feel the need to wear slips; although her skin is cold, the ground is not the source of that. It is the air. Something malicious. Something cruel.

She descends the first flight of stairs she finds, which have been carved out of stone, reflecting the architecture of the trees that cloud the valley, more populated than the elves, even with the swollen numbers of their guests. The rich stone is clean, dusted with crisp leaves that flee at her feet, whispering to each other and then dropping down the levels; Rivendell is a valley of depth, as well as breadth, and although she has been here for a week or more, she knows she's barely scratched the surface of the deep wells, the spiralling highs where stairs transition to elegant woven ladders into the sky, platforms wrapped around slender tree-trunks, where she has seen elven men and women lying with their weapons by their sides, laughing, playing games with wooden counters, intricate symbols carved into the tops with the very tip of a knife.

Even in the depths of night Rivendell does not sleep. Susan passes guards, their armour feathered and leaf-like, reminding her of the Cair, of the armour the Red Dwarves had forged for them five years after their coronations. "Good evening," she calls to them, and they touch their fingertips to their brows, their other hands resting on the heads of slim, feathered daggers.

She walks down. She cannot tell if she is inside, or out.

In Rivendell, there seems always to be music. Tonight, it is the sound of someone singing, someone without accompaniment, just a rough voice carving words out of a language Susan is unfamiliar with. It sounds beautiful. The song, though - the song is mournful.

Susan walks towards it. She's feeling mournful herself; since Lucy and Edmund arrived, she has waited for Peter faithfully, every night with her ears tilted to the wind for horses. For men. She knows the sound of Peter's arrival; she's familiar with it, year after year.

No Peter, tonight.

She follows the sound of the singing, but although she can hear the words clearly, the language is so unfamiliar that she can't begun to work out where one word ends and the next begins. The voice is wavering, rough and masculine, and with every beat comes the cold rasp of a stone drawn along a blade already as sharp as it will ever become. A habit, not a need.

The voice abruptly stops. The sound of the sword stops, too, although there is a rattling, a shaking of leather buckles and metal as the stone is slotted back into place where it belongs.

"Don't stop on my account," Susan says, stepping into the room. It is, like every other room in Rivendell, neither inside nor out, but it is slightly more protected than most; paintings decorate the walls, dark, spots of white light like reedy points of hope, swords, crowns, tears on the cheeks of ethereal elves neither male nor female.

The singer is the ranger, the one that had brought Lucy and Edmund back to her. He sits on the opposite side of the room, against another set of stairs, barefoot and barely clothed, a nightshirt untied and halfway open against his chest. His hair had been messy with the dirt of the road and sweat, but now his beard has been trimmed and his hair brushed, washed; all the same he has that air to him that all rangers have. Half-wild. Kept in only by his own will. "I did not know you were still awake, lady." His nightshirt is red and old, worn, and beautiful. Susan can see the stitching in the places it has not quite worn away, around the square neck and the sleeves, silver thread. It shines in the moonlight.

"I find it hard to sleep, sir," she lets her hand rest on the banister of the stairs on the other side of the room, the mirror to the stairs he's sitting on, "My brother is still unaccounted for. With my other siblings having landed here... I find it hard to believe he isn't in Middle-Earth somewhere."

His eyes are knowledgeable. "I am no knight."

"Then what should I call you?" Susan drops to the first stair, props her chin in her hands, bend over onto her knees. With her bare feet on the floor and her ankles exposed to the brief autumn wind, she feels younger than she has in years, and the night removes any need for social practices. _"Sir."_

He laughs, low and unpracticed. "When I was a boy, they called me Estel. Is that answer enough for you, lady?"

"I am a Queen in another country, you know," Susan says, feeling bold. "Estel. But that is not what you go by now, is it?"

"I go by many names," Estel says, removing the sharpening stone from a buckled pouch beside him, his sword across his knees, "That is one of them. _Lady."_

"Susan," Susan corrects, tucking her feet under her gown again, "But I suspect you have been told that. Lucy has been full of praise for you. You led them out of danger - certain death, apparently. She thinks very fondly of you. Talks, too."

"Certain death might still befall them," Estel says, and his next laugh is bitter and hollow, "Apologies, Lady Susan. My thoughts tonight are full of grief, but I do not mean to curse the future before it sets upon us."

"History tends to the tragic," Susan lets her eyes sweep the painted walls, the elves ancient with flaking paint and varnish, the tears that shine in the forgiving light of the moon, "You are older than you look, Estel."

"As are you." He lets his eyes, glinting, rest on her face. "A Queen. Your sister, too. Your brother, although he didn't tell me. That one is quiet."

"Edmund is the second knife," Susan says.

"The one you don't see coming in the dark," Estel follows, quick as a whiplash. He grins wickedly. "I am the first knife, then."

"Fast enough that seeing makes no difference," Susan lets her mouth slide into the half-moon smile she hasn't used in years, "I am the poison in the wine."

His laugh is full. "Your sister?"

"She is the balm," Susan presses her hands to her knees, "Have you not seen? Lucy does not kill. Never."

"You have." It isn't a question, and Susan doesn't patronise him with an answer. Estel looks at her, head cocked to the side, "And your other brother, then? The missing one?"

"He is the sword in the sunlight," Susan says softly.

"Ah," Estel looks like he has some pity about him, "The honourable death."

Susan feels at once very old, very alone, and very, very cold. She shivers, an uncontrollable spasm, and shuffles closer to the wall as though that will lend her any more warmth. She wishes the elves had thought to give her one more blanket, one more layer in this shift she's wearing; even a scarf, if she could have looked past her pride to ask one of the little halflings for the lending of one.

"You must be freezing," Estel says, his brown, scarred fingers playing with the buckle of his whetstone, never removing nor replacing it. His sword shines bright across his knees; Susan is reminded of Peter and Edmund, the night before they took their vows, holding vigil in the chapel built into Cair Paravel. They sat at opposing ends of the long stone table, the light across the sea making them pale, one candle between them, both lost in prayers of their own making, Peter wrapped in red, Edmund in green. Susan and Lucy had sat by the closed door of the chapel until morning, and not one of the Pevensies had slept, their eyes red with worry for the other three.

Susan shrugs one shoulder, and the thin shawl falls from it. "I am. A little."

"I was always cold, when I was young," Estel stands, sheathing his sword carefully into the leather arrangement on the floor, "I grew up here. I was the only mortal. I think the elves forgot that. Come." He crosses the room and offers his hand to her; pale on the inside where the sun has not burnt it, scars crossing his skin like latticework.

She takes his hand. Her pale fingers wrap around his thumb. She had a scar along her index finger, in her other body, but in this unblemished one she is free of any markings. "To where?"

"To my rooms," he whispers. His throat rasps his tongue. His body is a source of warmth, in the cold, ancient place Susan has found herself, "I have wraps there. Warm things. And then, lady, I will escort you to your sister before she wakes."

"Susan," Susan corrects. She feels hot and then cold, and then hot again.

In Narnia, Susan and Edmund had been the plotters, the sneakers, the ones that crept in the dark shadows so Lucy and Peter could shine. Susan would never marry (neither would Edmund, for quite a different set of reasons) because the appeal of her hand, the tantalising treat that was never quite given, allowed Narnia trade it would never have if she was promised to any one country over another. Lucy asked her if she was lonely, once, when they were in their early thirties, and Susan had said no. She was not lonely. No marriage did not mean no sex, and she very often took them to bed, these diplomats, these princes who thought they had the biggest endowment in the land, these men who thought they could own her. Yes, she would fuck them, and she would tell Edmund, and he would quietly draft the deals he thought most favourable, and he would send out his spies, and collect them under his wings, and she would send them on their way with promise to think about what they offered her, as though it could compare to what she already had.

Estel holds her hand a moment longer than he needs to, and then folds her arm around his, in a mockery of a lady holding the arm of a gentleman, going to dance. "Your skin is ice," he says.

And she knows he isn't thinking about that. He is genuine. He just wants to keep her out of the cold.

She misses Peter so badly she aches, and she wants to speak to Edmund so terribly she feels the tears in her eyes hot and unbearable. He has been near-silent since he arrived yesterday, and this is what he does, unpacking and dealing with his own experiences in his head before he tells her, compartmentalising what he does not need. All the same, she wants to talk to him.

"Edmund," she says, pressed so tightly to Estel she fears he will think she wants something she doesn't, "Can you bring me to him, instead?"

"Of course." His voice doesn't change, but he walks a little faster, up the stairs, past the watching guards with a word in that same language he sung in, "But I must insist on giving you something warmer, first. The cold invades."

"Thank you," she says, and says no more. This land is not hers, and the trees do not speak to her the way they did in Narnia; she feels pushed away, excluded from something she should never have been allowed into in the first place. "Tell me what you think of him."

Estel smells of the wilds, despite his clean appearance. He smells of soil, and of sleep, and of mannish sweat, under a thin layer of rye soap. "He is clever. They are both clever. He told me almost nothing of himself, and he spoke very little that was not needed."

"Tell me," Susan says, as Estel leads her into a set of rooms more private than the others, "What do you think of me?"

He leaves her standing in the doorway of his rooms and delves further. These rooms, although built to the same standards as the rest of Rivendell, have clearly been dwelt in by someone non-elvish; candles melt into the furniture, guttering in their wicks, and books are stacked haphazardly, their leather bindings cracked with age. He has not even attempted to sleep on the bed, she can see, but the sheets have been stripped and lain on the floor, in front of a glowing ember fire, lumps of coal smouldering on top. Estel has thrown open a chest by one wall, and is buried in it, his sure hands hunting for something. "Of you, my lady?"

She moves closer to the fire and crouches, holding her hands out to warm them, watching the purple recede from her cuticles. The hands of a queen, or the hands of a murderer? Why not both? "Yes."

He does her the courtesy of thinking about it. His silence is long and heavy. "You are very old. You are... very lonely. And you are very beautiful."

If she put her hand in the fire, splayed her fingers in the orange glow, how long would it take for the pain to reach her?

"You have a wisdom about you I have seen in rarely a person," he continues, approaching now, but she doesn't look away from the fire, "A mortal, that is." He drops something warm and heavy on her shoulders, and then both his hands smooth it down to her elbows, resting there, his body crouched behind hers, his hair tickling the back of her neck. "You are sad, lady. Who do you mourn?"

"Myself," she whispers; if she says it any louder, it will be real. She stands, and does it too quickly; her vision spins. He reaches out to catch her and she steps back. "Thank you for the blanket, sir. I can find my own way back."

She does not run. He does not follow.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr is softlyblues pls talk to me abt narnia


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